Not every datacenter is comprised of a large building stuffed full of computers. In the case of Liquid Robotics Wave Glider SV3, the datacenter is an autonomous, self-contained, sea-going vessel that supports the equivalent of a rack of computers. These computers operate banks of sensors that can be used to study all sorts of conditions useable by everything from oil exploration to weather forecasting.

The latest generation of the Wave Glider series of autonomous marine robots is the first to be able to handle more than a pair of computer systems. With expansion capabilities to more than 24 computers and wireless connectivity that can be used to coordinate an entire fleet of these modular computing robots, the possibilities for delivering significant levels of analytical power in otherwise inaccessible conditions and locations has expanded far beyond the capabilities of the previous generation of Liquid Robotics automatons (which themselves set records for time at sea and distance travelled).

The on-board processing power means that these robots are not simply data collection devices, but are also capable of analyzing the data that has been collected and reporting on the results. This is why the company is referring to them as datacenters @sea. CTO Robert Hines, the inventor of the robot, has said that the onboard computing power now possible is equivalent to what was found only in supercomputers from the recent past.

With the connectivity available, these ocean-going platforms, which run the Liquid Robotics Advanced Vehicle Operating System, offer services one would expect in a datacenter, such as multi-tenancy, scalability, and the ability to update software on the fly, without requiring a human in place on the vessel.